Moonies disrupted a congressional inquiry into religious cults last month, booing and shouting at Senator Robert Dole (R. Kan.), who chaired the one-day hearing under tight security. At least ninety Unification Church leaders had lobbied unsuccessfully to quash the hearings. Southern Baptists and other church spokesmen warned against any government regulation of religious groups.
Bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada recently decided to allow the ordination of self-admitted, but nonpracticing, homosexuals.
Organizational shuffling: Development Assistance Services, a three-year-old consulting firm for overseas poor relief, merged with and became a division of World Relief, an arm of the National Association of Evangelicals. Far Eastern Gospel Crusade and Missionary Internship split to become separate and autonomous organizations.
A U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia affirmed a lower court’s ruling that Transcendental Meditation is religious in nature and should not be taught in public high schools (Nov. 18, 1977, issue, p. 56). A TM course had been taught as an elective in five New Jersey high schools, partly through funding from the Health, Education, and Welfare Department, until challenged by a group of parents.
The Internal Revenue Service has revised its proposed guidelines that would limit tax exemptions to private schools considered racially discriminatory (Jan. 5, 1979, issue, p. 42). The original proposal required that private schools meet four out of five criteria for determining whether they are racially discriminatory, while the revised procedures allow the IRS to consider each case according to the specific circumstances of a given school.
The American Indian population is 40 percent Christian, according to what has been called the most comprehensive survey of Christian missions among Indians—World Vision’s Native American Christian Community. Of 320,000 Indian Christians in the U.S., the largest number, or 177,000, are Catholic. Mormons are making the greatest gains, however, adding 1,000 Indian converts per year over the last six years.
